path: root/doc/devel/fuzz.dox

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/**
@page fuzzer Fuzzing Kea

@section fuzzIntro Introduction

Fuzzing is a software-testing technique whereby a program is presented with a
variety of generated data as input and is monitored for abnormal conditions
such as crashes or hangs.

Fuzz testing of Kea uses the AFL (American Fuzzy Lop) program.  In this, Kea is
built using an AFL-supplied program that not only compiles the software but
also instruments it.  When run, AFL generates test cases and monitors the
execution of Kea as it processes them.  AFL will adjust the input based on
these measurements, seeking to discover and test new execution paths.

@section fuzzTypes Types of Kea Fuzzing

@subsection fuzzTypeNetwork Fuzzing with Network Packets

In this mode, AFL will start an instance of Kea and send it a packet of data.
Kea reads this packet and processes it in the normal way.  AFL monitors code
paths taken by Kea and, based on this, will vary the data sent in subsequent
packets.

@subsection fuzzTypeConfig Fuzzing with Configuration Files

Kea has a configuration file check mode whereby it will read a configuration
file, report whether the file is valid, then immediately exit.  Operation of
the configuration parsing code can be tested with AFL by fuzzing the
configuration file: AFL generates example configuration files based on a
dictionary of valid keywords and runs Kea in configuration file check mode on
them.  As with network packet fuzzing, the behaviour of Kea is monitored and
the content of subsequent files adjusted accordingly.

@section fuzzBuild Building Kea for Fuzzing

Whatever tests are done, Kea needs to be built with fuzzing in mind.  The steps
for this are:

-# Install AFL on the system on which you plan to build Kea and do the fuzzing.
   AFL may be downloaded from  http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl.  At the time of
   writing (August 2019), the latest version is 2.52b.  AFL should be built as
   per the instructions in the README file in the distribution.  The LLVM-based
   instrumentation programs should also be built, as per the instructions in
   the file llvm_mode/README.llvm (also in the distribution).  Note that this
   requires that LLVM be installed on the machine used for the fuzzing.

-# Build Kea.  Kea should be compiled and built as usual, although the
   following additional steps should be observed:
   - Set the environment variable CXX to point to the afl-clang-fast++
     compiler.
   - Specify a value of "--prefix" on the command line to set the directory
     into which Kea is installed.
   - Add the "--enable-fuzz" switch to the "configure" command line.
   .
   For example:
   @code
   CXX=/opt/afl/afl-clang-fast++ ./configure --enable-fuzz --prefix=$HOME/installed
   make
   @endcode

-# Install Kea to the directory specified by "--prefix":
   @code
   make install
   @endcode
   This step is not strictly necessary, but makes running AFL easier.
   "libtool", used by the Kea build procedure to build executable images, puts
   the executable in a hidden ".libs" subdirectory of the target directory and
   creates a shell script in the target directory for running it.  The wrapper
   script handles the fact that the Kea libraries on which the executable depends
   are not installed by fixing up the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to
   point to them.  It is possible to set the variable appropriately and use AFL
   to run the image from the ".libs" directory; in practice, it is a lot
   simpler to install the programs in the directories set by "--prefix" and run
   them from there.

@section fuzzRun Running the Fuzzer

@subsection fuzzRunNetwork Fuzzing with Network Packets

-# In this type of fuzzing, Kea is processing packets from the fuzzer over a
   network interface.  This interface could be a physical interface or it could
   be the loopback interface.  Either way, it needs to be configured with a
   suitable IPv4 or IPv6 address depending on whether kea-dhcp4 or kea-dhcp6 is
   being fuzzed.

-# Once the interface has been decided, these need to be set in the
   configuration file used for the test.  For example, to fuzz Kea-dhcp4
   using the loopback interface "lo" and IPv4 address 10.53.0.1, the
   configuration file would contain the following snippet:
   @code
       "Dhcp4": {
           :
           "interfaces-config": {
               "interfaces": ["lo/10.53.0.1"]
           },
           "subnet4": [
               {
                   :
                   "interface": "lo",
                   :
               }
           ],
           :
        }
   @endcode

-# The specification of the interface and address in the configuration file
   is used by the main Kea code.  Owing to the way that the fuzzing interface
   between Kea and AFL is implemented, the address and interface also need to
   be specified by the environment variables KEA_AFL_INTERFACE and
   KEA_AFL_ADDRESS.  With a configuration file containing statements listed
   above, the relevant commands are:
   @code
   export KEA_AFL_INTERFACE="lo"
   export KEA_AFL_ADDRESS="10.53.0.1"
   @endcode
   (If kea-dhcp6 is being fuzzed, then KEA_AFL_ADDRESS should specify an IPv6
   address.)

-# The fuzzer can now be run: a suitable command line is:
   @code
   afl-fuzz -m 4096 -i seeds -o fuzz-out -- ./kea-dhcp6 -c kea.conf -p 9001 -P 9002
   @endcode
   In the above:
   - It is assumed that the directory holding the "afl-fuzz" program is in
     the path, otherwise include the path name when invoking it.
   - "-m 4096" allows Kea to take up to 4096 MB of memory.  (Use "ulimit" to
     check and optionally modify the amount of virtual memory that can be used.)
   - The "-i" switch specifies a directory (in this example, one named "seeds")
     holding "seed" files.  These are binary files that AFL will use as its
     source for generating new packets.  They can generated from a real packet
     stream with wireshark: right click on a packet, then export as binary
     data. Ensure that only the payload of the UDP packet is exported.
   - The "-o" switch specifies a directory (in this example called "fuzz-out")
     that AFL will use to hold packets it has generated and packets that it has
     found causes crashes or hangs.
   - "--" Separates the AFL command line from that of Kea.
   - "./kea-dhcp6" is the program being fuzzed.  As mentioned above, this
     should be an executable image, and it will be simpler to fuzz one
     that has been installed.
   - The "-c" switch sets the configuration file Kea should use while being
     fuzzed.
   - "-p 9001 -P 9002". The port on which Kea should listen and the port to
     which it should send replies.  If omitted, Kea will try to use the default
     DHCP ports, which are in the privileged range.  Unless run with "sudo",
     Kea will fail to open the port and Kea will exit early on: no useful
     information will be obtained from the fuzzer.

-# Check that the fuzzer is working.  If run from a terminal (with a black
   background - AFL is particular about this), AFL will bring up a curses-style
   interface showing the progress of the fuzzing.  A good indication that
   everything is working is to look at the "total paths" figure.  Initially,
   this should increase reasonably rapidly.  If not, it is likely that Kea is
   failing to start or initialize properly and the logging output (assuming
   this has been configured) should be examined.

@subsection fuzzRunConfig Fuzzing with Configuration Files

AFL can be used to check the parsing of the configuration files.  In this type
of fuzzing, AFL generates configuration files which is passes to Kea to check.
Steps for this fuzzing are:

-# Build Kea as described above.

-# Create a dictionary of keywords.  Although AFL will mutate the files by
   byte swaps, bit flips and the like, better results are obtained if it can
   create new files based on keywords that could appear in the file.  The
   dictionary is described in the AFL documentation, but in brief, the file
   contains successive lines of the form 'variable=keyword"', e.g.
   @code
   PD_POOLS="pd-pools"
   PEERADDR="peeraddr"
   PERSIST="persist"
   PKT="pkt"
   PKT4="pkt4"
   @endcode
   "variable" can be anything, as its name is ignored by AFL.  However, all the
   variable names in the file must be different.  "keyword" is a valid keyword
   that could appear in the configuration file.  The convention adopted in the
   example above seems to work well - variables have the same name as keywords,
   but are in uppercase and have hyphens replaced by underscores.

-# Run Kea with a command line of the form:
   @code
   afl-fuzz -m 4096 -i seeds -o fuzz-out -x dict.dat -- ./kea-dhcp4 -t @@
   @endcode
   In the above command line:
   - Everything up to and including the "--" is the AFL command.  The switches
     are as described in the previous section apart from the "-x" switch: this
     specifies the dictionary file ("dict.dat" in this example) described
     above.
   - The Kea command line uses the "-t" switch to specify the configuration
     file to check.  This is specified by two consecutive "@" signs: AFL
     will replace these with the name of a file it has created when starting
     Kea.

@section Fuzzing Internals

@subsection fuzzInternalNetwork Fuzzing with Network Packets

The AFL fuzzer delivers packets to Kea's stdin.  Although the part of Kea
concerning the reception of packets could have been modified to accept input
from stdin and have Kea pick them up in the normal way, a less-intrusive method
was adopted.

The packet loop in the main server code for kea-dhcp4 and kea-dhcp6 is
essentially:
@code{.unparsed}
while (not shutting down) {
    Read and process one packet
}
@endcode
When --enable-fuzz is specified, this is conceptually modified to:
@code{.unparsed}
while (not shutting down) {
    Read stdin and copy data to address/port on which Kea is listening
    Read and process one packet
}
@endcode

Implementation is via an object of class "Fuzz".  When created, it identifies
an interface, address and port on which Kea is listening and creates the
appropriate address structures for these.  The port is passed as an argument to
the constructor because at the point at which the object is constructed, that
information is readily available.  The interface and address are picked up from
the environment variables mentioned above.  Consideration was given to
extracting the interface and address information from the configuration file,
but it was decided not to do this:

-# The configuration file can contain the definition of multiple interfaces;
   if this is the case, the one being used for fuzzing is unclear.
-# The code is much simpler if the data is extracted from environment
   variables.

Every time through the loop, the object reads the data from stdin and writes it
to the identified address/port.  Control then returns to the main Kea code,
which finds data available on the address/port on which it is listening and
handles the data in the normal way.

In practice, the "while" line is actually:
@code{.unparsed}
while (__AFL_LOOP(count)) {
@endcode
__AFL_LOOP is a token recognized and expanded by the AFL compiler (so no need
to "#include" a file defining it) that implements the logic for the fuzzing.
Each time through the loop (apart from the first), it raises a SIGSTOP signal
telling AFL that the packet has been processed and instructing it to provide
more data.  The "count" value is the number of times through the loop before
the loop terminates and the process is allowed to exit normally.  When this
happens, AFL will start the process anew.  The purpose of periodically shutting
down the process is to avoid issues raised by the fuzzing being confused with
any issues associated with the process running for a long time (e.g. memory
leaks).

@subsection fuzzInternalConfig Fuzzing with Configuration Files

No changes were required to Kea source code to fuzz configuration files. In
fact, other than compiling with afl-clang++ and installing the resultant
executable, no other steps are required.  In particular, there is no need to
use the "--enable-fuzz" switch in the configuration command line (although
doing so will not cause any problems).

@subsection fuzzThreads Changes Required for Multi-Threaded Kea

The early versions of the fuzzing code used a separate thread to receive the
packets from AFL and to write them to the socket on which Kea is listening.
The lack of synchronization proved a problem, with Kea hanging in some
instances.  Although some experiments with thread synchronization were
successful, in the end the far simpler single-threaded implementation described
above was adopted for the single-threaded Kea 1.6.  Should Kea be modified to
become multi-threaded, the fuzzing code will need to be changed back to reading
the AFL input in the background.

@section fuzzNotes Notes

@subsection fuzzNotesUnitTests Unit Test Failures

If unit tests are built when --enable-fuzzing is specified, note that tests
which check or use the DHCP servers (i.e. the unit tests in src/bin/dhcp4,
src/bin/dhcp6 and src/bin/kea-admin) will fail.  With no AFL-related
environment variables defined, a C++ exception will be thrown with the
description "no fuzzing interface has been set".  However, if the
KEA_AFL_INTERFACE and KEA_AFL_ADDRESS variables are set to valid values, the
tests will hang.

Both these results are expected and should cause no concern.  The exception is
thrown by the fuzzing object constructor when it attempts to create the address
structures for routing packets between AFL and Kea but discovers it does not
have the necessary information.  The hang is due to the fact that the AFL
processing loop does a synchronous read from stdin, something not expected by
the test. (Should random input be supplied on stdin, e.g.  from the keyboard,
the test will most likely fail as the input is unlikely to be that expected by
the test.)


*/